This is just one area you don't currently agree on. Both of you will likely change your politics a couple more times as you get older, so not worth throwing away a friend - unless they go fundamentalist and their politics is all they'll talk about and/or they bring it into every conversation.

This is just one area you don't currently agree on. Both of you will likely change your politics a couple more times as you get older, so not worth throwing away a friend - unless they go fundamentalist and their politics is all they'll talk about and/or they bring it into every conversation.

To be honest I have a friend - we're not particularly close but I perhaps see him a couple times a month. We're both fairly set in out political bias, and we don't see eye to eye at all on it. BUT. We have some great debates. We both agree that whatever our particular bias is, it is important to listen to another viewpoint and understand why people believe what they do. It doesn't affect our friendship in any way, we both respect each other's views.

Same. I'm liberal but have a friend who's like red ken and scargill combined and we are fundamentally opposed on several issues. Often have healthy debates over a few beers. OP is arguing for the sake of it which is a foolish pursuit.

Same. I'm liberal but have a friend who's like red ken and scargill combined and we are fundamentally opposed on several issues. Often have healthy debates over a few beers. OP is arguing for the sake of it which is a foolish pursuit.

Opium, actually. And there was a perfectly patriotic reason for it - China's control of tea, crockery and other goods, and lack of need for anything British, meant that UK gold and silver reserves were being drained at an alarming rate. If we'd not found an inventive way of forcing the issue, the country would have been bankrupted.

As regards slavery, and more specifically African slavery which I guess is what you mean, the picture is at best muddled. Legal precedent bats it back and forth from legality to illegality between 1102 and 1834, although it was generally held that slaves were freed as soon as they set foot on English soil. Slavery was never a matter of national pride; it was something all of the colonial powers did. It only became a matter of national pride when we abolished it before the French.

Yes, quite right, it was opium. As regards slavery, I think as a nation we were very proud of our success as major players in the slve trade. We celebrated it with adournments to our buildings of the time, where it was reflected in the stone carvings. Very prevelent at the time, especially in Liverpool and Bristol, major slave trade ports.

Of course the bible was cited as justification for slavery, so early opponents were deemed to be anti christian and unpatriotic.

My granfather was an anti monarchist who was badly injured fighting for this country in the last war.

On the subject of things which are insulting, that is, albeit unthinkingly.

WW2, to which I assume you're referring as "the last war" ended over 6 decades ago. Since then, British troops have been to war, been injured and died in Palestine, Korea, the Falklands, Suez, the Gulf, Malaya and many, many more.

Just because the civilian population hasn't necessarily felt themselves to be at war, it doesn't make the dead or wounded troops any less dead or wounded.

How many people will need to die in a war before WW2 ceases to be "the last war"?

How about they keep all the money they make and we give them nothing? Because they'd be far, far richer and we'd be far, far poorer. It only takes a couple of minutes Googling to find out that we get far more money FROM the Royal Family than we pay out to them, so WHY is this always trotted out? (And that's not even taking into consideration the money we get from tourists).

Well, I like it how you've completely forgot about the costs of having a Royal Family, like security? That alone costs 100 million.